Intelligence

Intelligence, in government and military operations, evaluated information concerning the strength, activities, and probable courses of action of foreign countries or nonstate actors that are usually, though not always, enemies or opponents. The term also is used to refer to the collection, analysis, and distribution of such information and to secret intervention in the political or economic affairs of other countries, an activity commonly known as “covert action.” Intelligence is an important component of national power and a fundamental element in decision making regarding national security, defense, and foreign policies.

Nature of intelligence

Levels of intelligence

Intelligence is conducted on three levels: strategic (sometimes called national), tactical, and counterintelligence. The broadest of these levels is strategic intelligence, which includes information about the capabilities and intentions of foreign countries. Tactical intelligence, sometimes called operational or combat intelligence, is information required by military field commanders. Because of the enormous destructive power of modern weaponry, the decision making of political leaders often must take into account information derived from tactical as well as strategic intelligence; major field commanders may often also need multiple levels of intelligence. Thus, the distinction between these two levels of intelligence may be vanishing.

Counterintelligence is aimed at protecting and maintaining the secrecy of a country’s intelligence operations. Its purpose is to prevent spies or other agents of a foreign power from penetrating the country’s government, armed services, or intelligence agencies. Counterintelligence also is concerned with protecting advanced technology, deterring terrorism, and combating international narcotics trafficking. Counterintelligence operations sometimes produce positive intelligence, including information about the intelligence-gathering tools and techniques of other countries and about the kinds of intelligence other countries may be seeking. Counterintelligence operations sometimes involve the manipulation of an adversary’s intelligence services through the placement of “moles,” or double agents, in sensitive areas. In authoritarian and totalitarian states, counterintelligence also encompasses the surveillance of key elites and the repression of dissent.

Governments often direct their intelligence services to perform covert actions to support diplomatic initiatives or to achieve goals that are unattainable by diplomatic means alone. The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), for example, organized the overthrow of the government of Guatemala by military coup in 1954 and helped to undermine the government of President Salvador Allende (1908–73) of Chile prior to the military coup there in 1973. More recently, U.S. covert actions have included providing military and financial support to the mujahideen (from Arabic mujāhidūn, “those who engage in jihad”), who fought Soviet troops in Afghanistan during the 1980s, and aiding U.S. and British military forces in their campaign against Afghanistan’s Taliban government in 2001. Earlier in the 20th century, the intelligence services of the Soviet Union assassinated exiled political figures such as Leon Trotsky (1879–1940) and supported Marxist-Leninist organizations throughout the world.

Types of intelligence

The types of intelligence a country may require are extremely varied. The country’s armed services need military intelligence, its space and Earth-satellite programs need scientific intelligence, its foreign offices need political and biographical intelligence, and its premier or president needs a combination of these types and many others. Consequently, intelligence has become a vast industry. At the beginning of the 21st century it was estimated that the U.S. government spent some $30 billion annually on intelligence-related activities, employing perhaps 200,000 people in the United States and many thousands more U.S. citizens overseas in both clandestine and overt capacities. The intelligence operations of the Soviet Union were likely of even greater dimensions prior to the dissolution of the country in 1991. All other major countries maintain large intelligence bureaucracies.

Political intelligence is at once the most sought-after and the least reliable of the various types of intelligence. Because no one can predict with absolute certainty the effects of the political forces in a foreign country, analysts are reduced to making forecasts of alternatives based on what is known about political trends and patterns. Concrete data that are helpful in this regard include voting trends, details of party organization and leadership, and information derived from analyses of political documents. A chief source of political intelligence has long been the reports of diplomats, who normally gather data from “open,” or legally accessible, sources in the country where they are stationed (seediplomacy). Their work is supplemented by that of the professional intelligence apparatus.

Much military intelligence is gathered by military attachés, who have formal diplomatic status but are known to be mainly concerned with intelligence. Space satellites produce reliable information about the composition of military units and weapons and can track their movements; satellites are especially important for monitoring a country’s production of strategic ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction (i.e., biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons). The most valuable kinds of military intelligence concern military organization and equipment, procedures and formations, and the number of units and total personnel.

The state of a country’s economy is crucial to its military strength, its political development, and the conduct of its foreign policy. Consequently, intelligence organizations attach great importance to the collection of economic information, including data on trade, finance, natural resources, industrial capacity, and gross national product.

Because of continuous advances in technology, there has been a constant race between new methods of collecting intelligence and new techniques of protecting secret information. In order to guard against scientific or technological breakthroughs that may give other countries a decisive advantage, intelligence organizations keep abreast of foreign advances in nuclear technology, in the electronic, chemical, and computer sciences, and in many other scientific fields.

In order to make accurate predictions of a foreign country’s future behaviour, intelligence systems obviously require detailed information about the personal characteristics of the country’s leaders. The need for biographical information has expanded with the proliferation of international organizations, whose officers must be briefed about their foreign counterparts. Intelligence agencies also compile data on foreign populations, topographies, climates, and a wide range of ecological factors.

Sources of intelligence

Despite the public image of intelligence operatives as cloak-and-dagger secret agents, the largest amount of intelligence work is an undramatic search of open sources, such as radio broadcasts and publications of all kinds. Much of this work, which also includes sifting reports from diplomats, businessmen, accredited military attachés, and other observers, is performed by university-trained research analysts in quiet offices.

Covert sources of intelligence fall into three major categories: imagery intelligence, which includes aerial and space reconnaissance; signals intelligence, which includes electronic eavesdropping and code breaking; and human intelligence, which involves the secret agent working at the classic spy trade. Broadly speaking, the relative value of these sources is reflected in the order in which they are listed above. A photograph, for example, constitutes hard (i.e., reliable) intelligence, whereas the report of a secret agent may be speculative and difficult to prove.

Methods of intelligence gathering

Good intelligence management begins with the proper determination of what needs to be known. Unless precise requirements are set, data will be collected unsystematically and the decision maker ultimately left without pertinent information on which to act. Collected data must be evaluated and transformed into a usable form (and sometimes stored for future use). Evaluation is essential, because many of the wide variety of sources are of doubtful reliability. A standardized system is used to rate the reliability of sources and the likely accuracy of the information they provide (e.g., information may be classified as confirmed, probably true, possibly true, or unlikely to be true).

Information obtained from open sources probably constitutes more than four-fifths of the input to most intelligence systems, though this proportion varies with the number of state secrets a country may have. Clandestine collection methods from covert sources provide the basis for much of the drama and romance attributed to intelligence work in fiction. Although the classic espionage agent will never be completely obsolete, some observers have suggested that the role largely has been taken over by machines, including orbiting reconnaissance satellites, long-range cameras, and a variety of sensing, detecting, and acoustical instruments. With this kind of technology, it is now possible to see in darkness, to hear from great distances, and to take detailed photographs from altitudes of hundreds of miles. Nevertheless, only spies can produce information about the attitudes and intentions of foreign leaders or international terrorists and other criminals. Indeed, a lack of adequate human intelligence was cited by some critics as a factor in the failure of U.S. intelligence and law-enforcement agencies to prevent the devastating terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C., on September 11, 2001 (seeSeptember 11 attacks).

Techniques of aerial reconnaissance have advanced dramatically since the 1940s, when the United States drifted balloons carrying special cameras across Soviet territory to photograph military and industrial installations. Today aerial reconnaissance is conducted by satellites, aircraft, and unmanned drones, which can orbit a battlefield for 24 hours. The U.S. U-2 aircraft and its higher-flying successors are capable of taking photographs that experts can read with great accuracy. Imaging satellites, which can produce accurate information about the number and location of a country’s nuclear missiles and other weapons, made possible the arms control treaties between the United States and the Soviet Union. High-altitude photographs are also used to diagnose environmental catastrophes, to locate terrorist training camps, and even to detect human rights abuses.

Intelligence organizations often employ electronic scavengers (from ships, planes, listening posts in embassies and military installations, and orbiting satellites) to collect information about a country’s radio communications and its naval equipment and operations. An individual submarine, for example, can be identified by the telltale and unique noises it makes (its “signature”). During the Cold War the United States collected sensitive signals intelligence by tapping communications lines in Soviet territorial waters. It also used satellites and special planes for conducting missions close to the borders of potential adversaries. Similarly, the Soviet Union (and later Russia) collected signals intelligence from listening stations in diplomatic and consular missions and from large “fishing trawlers” that shadowed the U.S. fleet.

The use of computers to analyze data on complex phenomena such as industrial production, missile launches, and rates of economic growth has created vast amounts of information that threaten intelligence systems with inundation, making the filtering of useless information a key task. Since World War II great efforts have been made to develop efficient means of cataloging, storing, and retrieving the gigantic volume of data being amassed. Although some observers believe that data collection, especially in the Internet age, has been overemphasized at the expense of analysis, computer technology and the application of artificial intelligence, which allow computer programs to organize mammoth amounts of raw material for analysts, promise to make the tidal wave of information manageable. For example, such techniques can be used at border crossings to quickly compare the image of a suspected terrorist with thousands of pictures of known criminals.

History of intelligence activities

Premodern intelligence

The ancient soothsayers, who claimed to be able to communicate with the gods and were often said to have the power of predicting the future, were perhaps the earliest counterparts of the modern intelligence agency. As in modern times, their reports were often ambiguous and frequently ignored by decision makers.

The Bible says that God advised Moses (Numbers 13) to send agents to “spy out the land of Canaan.” After 40 days, 12 agents returned to report that the people in the land flowing with milk and honey were more powerful than the Israelites—and on the basis of this intelligence the Israelites rebelled and were punished by God.

The ancient Chinese author Sun Tzu (fl. 4th century bc), whose Ping-fa (The Art of War) is said to be widely read by contemporary Chinese strategists, identified five kinds of secret agent; their modern counterparts are the agent in place (who has access to enemy secrets), the double agent (who is recruited from an enemy’s intelligence and security service), the deception agent (who provides disinformation to confuse the enemy), the expendable agent (whose loss can enable other more important agents to operate), and the penetration agent (who has access to an enemy’s senior leadership). Sun Tzu stressed the importance of good intelligence organization, and he also wrote of counterintelligence and psychological warfare.

In Europe during the Middle Ages, intelligence was systematically used but crudely organized. Although it was usually impossible to conceal the massing of troops or ships, communication was slow, making the achievement of strategic surprise a difficult matter of balancing the time required to assemble large forces against the time needed by enemy agents to discover and report them.

In the 15th century the Italian city-states began to establish permanent embassies in foreign capitals. The Venetians used such outposts as intelligence sources and even developed codes and ciphers by which information could be secretly communicated. By the 16th century other European governments had followed suit.

The rise of nationalism was accompanied by the growth of standing armies and professional diplomats as well as by the establishment of organizations and procedures for procuring foreign intelligence. Queen Elizabeth I (reigned 1558–1603) of England maintained a notable intelligence organization. Her principal state secretary, Sir Francis Walsingham (c. 1532–90), developed a network of intelligence agents in foreign countries. He recruited graduates of Oxford and Cambridge, developed the craft of espionage, including tools and techniques for making and breaking codes, and engaged in much foreign political intrigue. Later, Armand-Jean du Plessis, cardinal et duc de Richelieu (1585–1642), and Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658)—whose intelligence chief, John Thurloe (1616–68), is often cited as an early master spy—developed notable intelligence systems. The intelligence operations of the Great Powers also included secret channels of communication, the penetration of émigré circles, and the assassination of enemies of the state.

Not until the late 18th century, however, did there arise sharp divisions between organizations devoted to internal security (a counterintelligence function) and those concerned with external foreign intelligence. As populations began to give their allegiance to the state rather than to dynasties or religious leaders, national leaders paid increasing attention to the opinions of foreign publics, resulting in both a new diplomacy and new intelligence needs. Major innovations in organization and doctrine have been credited to the Prussian king Frederick the Great (reigned 1740–86). Frederick, and later Wilhelm Stieber, an aide to the Prussian prime minister and later German chancellor Otto von Bismarck (1815–98), organized the intelligence-gathering functions of the general staff. Under Stieber, a single military intelligence agency—the world’s first large-scale espionage organization—was established to serve as the country’s eyes on the outside world.

Intelligence in the modern era

At the turn of the 20th century European governments required increasing amounts of strategic intelligence to compete in power politics, to support their foreign empires, and to keep up with advances in military and communications technology. Accordingly, intelligence bureaus spread throughout the European continent, resulting in a corresponding growth in counterintelligence. Nevertheless, when World War I broke out in 1914 the intelligence services of most European countries were inadequate. The war, which none of the combatants intended, is often cited in hindsight as a tragic failure of intelligence. The French intelligence service, which already had been weakened by the Dreyfus affair (seeAlfred Dreyfus), was torn by internal intrigue, and other services had been shaken by scandals. One spectacular failure of French intelligence was its gross miscalculation of German military strength in 1914, when it underrated German technical and tactical capabilities. German intelligence also had deteriorated, and by 1914 the German general staff evidently placed little faith in the information its intelligence officers supplied. Nevertheless, the Germans carried out successful intelligence activities in Persia and scored limited successes in the United States. The Russian intelligence service initially enjoyed great success against the Austrians because of the treason of an Austrian general staff officer, but it subsequently performed no better than the services of other countries involved in the war. The British succeeded in breaking German naval codes, and they were able to use the information they obtained to hasten U.S. entry into the war by exposing German efforts to involve Mexico in a war with the United States. However, tactical intelligence provided to British commanders on the Western Front was fraught with optimistic and misleading assessments of Germany’s military capabilities.

Unlike the European countries, the United States had no central intelligence organization. Indeed, at the beginning of the war, army intelligence was only a small section of the general staff, comprising two officers and two clerks. By the end of the war this service had grown to 1,200 officers and civilians. Overall, the American intelligence community at this time was staffed by amateurs and was quite deficient.

The intelligence lessons of World War I, along with advances in technology—especially electronics and aircraft technology—resulted in a proliferation of new intelligence agencies in the 1920s and ’30s, particularly in totalitarian states (Italy, Germany, and the Soviet Union) but also in some democratic European countries. The expansionist policies of the Soviet Union, Italy, Germany, and Japan in the 1930s, and especially the outbreak of World War II in 1939, precipitated the creation and expansion of intelligence services throughout the world. In 1942 the United States, which had virtually no peacetime intelligence services, created its first full-fledged organization for intelligence and secret operations, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). The war imposed intelligence requirements never before faced by the major warring powers, primarily as a result of rapidly advancing military technology. Air warfare in particular required vast new offensive and defensive intelligence operations. Air force commanders needed information on possible bombing targets, as well as on enemy fighters and antiaircraft artillery. In the first days of World War II, the United States relied on the insurance records of German industries and on aerial reconnaissance to identify bombing targets. The growth of radio broadcasting enabled the development of the new art of psychological warfare, whose effects demanded study by intelligence services.

Yet despite its rapid development, intelligence forecasting remained a precarious trade. Many key events in the war—including the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Pearl Harbor attack against the United States by Japan in December 1941, the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944–January 1945, and the Allied bombing campaigns against Germany (1942–45), in which the Germans showed unexpected resilience—were marked by the failure of decision makers to profit from their elaborate intelligence networks.

However, there was one area of enormous success. Perhaps the most significant intelligence achievement of the war was the Ultra project, in which the British, using a German Enigma encoding machine obtained from the Poles and relying on earlier decryption efforts by the Poles and the French, intercepted and deciphered top-secret German military communications throughout much of the war. In essence, the Ultra project enabled the Allies to read the mind of the German high command. As the war progressed, Hitler’s increasingly centralized control of operations on all fronts made German military operations especially vulnerable. Ultra was particularly important in the defeat of the German U-boat fleet and the German surface navy. When the Allies were caught by surprise, such as in the American defeat at Kasserine Pass, the Allied defeat at Arnhem, and the Battle of the Bulge, the Germans had used land lines for communication or Ultra intercepts had been misused.

During the Cold War intelligence became one of the world’s largest industries, employing hundreds of thousands of professionals. Every major country created enormous new intelligence bureaucracies, usually consisting of interlocking and often competitive secret agencies that vied for new assignments and sometimes withheld information from each other. The United States established the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 1947. Among other well-known intelligence organizations created during this period were the United Kingdom’s MI5 and MI6, the Soviet Union’s KGB (Committee for State Security), France’s SDECE (External Documentation and Counterespionage Service), China’s MSS (Ministry of State Security), and Israel’s Mossad. By the 1970s every regional power and many relatively small states had developed intelligence services. At the same time, the exploits of spies and counterspies became a staple of the entertainment and publishing industries. In books, movies, and television, intelligence agents were portrayed in roles that were sometimes comic but often deadly serious. All these accounts tended to glamorize an occupation that was often painfully tedious and sometimes (in the opinion of some) distasteful and immoral.

In the last two decades of the Cold War the United States relied heavily on imagery and signals intelligence, including satellite photography, to collect information on Soviet weapons of mass destruction. Its emphasis on these sources of intelligence, however, may actually have weakened its ability to combat terrorist organizations, which by their nature are not easily penetrated through technical means.

Since the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, nonstate actors (e.g., terrorist organizations, militias, and drug cartels) have developed sophisticated intelligence and counterintelligence capabilities that rival those of some states. The Islamic terrorist organization al-Qaeda, which organized the September 11 attacks against the United States, had an intelligence infrastructure that maintained safe houses in the Middle East, Europe, and North America. Evidence uncovered after the U.S. and British military campaign in Afghanistan indicated that al-Qaeda had purchased sophisticated computer hardware that enabled it to send enciphered communications to terrorist cells and to track U.S. photographic reconnaissance satellites. Today, terrorists and drug traffickers from the jungles of Colombia to the streets of western Europe employ advisers drawn from the intelligence services of the former Soviet Union, East Germany, and Yugoslavia and use criminals of various kinds to bribe or terrorize their opponents and protect their organizations. Accordingly, since the end of the Cold War the targets of intelligence activity have been just as likely nonstate actors as states. Operations against such organizations require smaller and more-flexible intelligence services capable of combining technical intelligence (i.e., imagery and signals intelligence) and human intelligence; operations officers and analysts; and various military, intelligence, and security organizations.